


The Moments Between History

by lesbiancharliekelly



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 11:30:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17182136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiancharliekelly/pseuds/lesbiancharliekelly
Summary: Magnus and Taako just joined the Bureau of Balance, and they are maybe falling for each other hard, and they maybe don't know what to do about it. But they also maybe have a past together that they don't remember... at least at first.





	The Moments Between History

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case it isn't clear, any time there's something in italics AND in quotes, it's indicating that the person is speaking Elvish.

The thing is, Taako had always been alone. He didn’t remember his childhood well – he suspected it was because he tried as best he could to not think about it – but when he did look back, there was no one who had really loved him. He had lived with his aunt for a few years, but that had been so temporary. That was what came to mind for Taako when he thought about love – the word “temporary.” Taako’s time with Sazed, given its disastrous ending, did nothing if not solidify his feeling of being unlovable. If Taako was being honest with himself, though – which he rarely was – that was not what really got to him. It was just that sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night and reached for something that wasn’t there, with a cold certainty that he was missing someone specific. The fact of his unlovability he could accept, but this feeling of missing not love but something more concrete – someone who smelled like pine ad sawdust and varnish in his bed, or the feel of a calloused hand in his – it shook him awake in the middle of the night and would not let him get back to sleep.

It had been quite a while since Taako had kept the company of anyone else for more than a day or two at most. So moving to a fucking _moon base_ in the _sky_ where he would be trapped with the same people for weeks on end? Well, let’s just say it hadn’t been the most smooth transition. Taako, Merle, and Magnus had only just passed their initiation, but Taako was skittish and moody. He couldn’t help second-guessing his decision to join the Bureau. Even with training, he found himself full of pent up energy. He wasn’t used to staying in one place so long. He’d find himself making excuses to get up and leave if someone sat down next to him at lunch that he’d already talked to the day before. He didn’t want anything getting to feel too _familiar_.

Taako guessed that the one good thing about his move to the moon base was it fixing his sleep schedule. He’d always slept more than other elves, a good eight hours or more when he could. Now he found that he was too restless to fall asleep until 4 or 5 am each night. Waking up at 8 am for training meant that he was getting the four hours elves were supposed to sleep. If he was feeling more exhausted than usual too, well, that was probably just because of training, or the fact that he was still getting used to everything on the base.

Still, Taako wasn’t used to sleeping so little, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. The first night, when he found himself unable to sleep, he’d just snuck out of the dorm and wandered around, trying to tire himself until he could collapse from sheer exhaustion. Magnus mentioned something to Taako the next day about how exhausted he looked, but Taako had shrugged it off. That night, when he found himself unable to sleep again, he slipped out the door of the dorm again, trying not to wake anyone. He felt frustrated, and frustrated with himself for feeling frustrated. _Other elves never slept as much as you. The Bureau probably won’t want you anyway if you keep being so lazy._ He was so lost in thought that it took him a minute to realize Magnus had followed him out the door and onto the quad.

Taako immediately composed himself, trying to think of something to say, when Magnus just grinned an easy smile, asking, “Going for a walk? Mind if I join you?” Taako faltered, wanting to brush Magnus off. But the truth was, as much as he tried to avoid people during the day, the moon base had felt even more disquieting last night with no one else around. So Taako, feigning nonchalance, just shrugged in reply, and Magnus fell into step beside him.

 _It isn’t like we to have some sort of heart to heart_ , Taako told himself. In fact, they said nothing, instead falling into a companionable silence so easy it almost felt more intimate to Taako. Magnus’ presence by his side somehow felt right. It was like finding an old sweater that he’d thought he’d lost and finding it still fit. Taako shrugged off the thought. Taako wasn’t used to feeling comfortable, and he knew if he examined the thought too closely he’d push Magnus away. Instead, he just tried to clear his mind of any thought at all and lose himself in the stars and the sound of footsteps beside him. 

***

The thing is, Magnus had always loved easily. That’s what made his transition to the moon base so uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to being in a community of people who were coworkers, not friends, as he kept having to remind himself. And he had to admit, he was guarded too. After Raven’s Roost, he’d kept to himself. Losing not just his wife and his mentor, but his whole community, had made it hard to find the motivation to open up to anyone else. Magnus had loved easily and fully and then one day, someone had taken everyone he’d loved from him. This is what had scared him the most, that day he came home to find himself the sole survivor: it had felt familiar, somehow. _Was this always what was going to happen?_ Magnus asked himself, standing there in the rubble of his home. _Was this inevitable? Am I cursed man?_

Magnus figured that if he really were marked for loss, somehow, he’d throw himself into doing what good he could and hope that the bad luck hit him sooner rather than later and let him see Julia again. So he took on odd jobs, rushed headlong into danger, and, most importantly, didn’t allow himself the luxury of growing close to anyone he worked for. His urge to help people, to protect – it was all a job now, nothing more. He couldn’t afford for it to be anything more. For a man who loved easily, it had been hard, but it was better than allowing people to get close to him and finding that his bad luck had indeed followed him, that they were in danger because of him and that once again, he couldn’t protect them.

The devastation at Phandalin had confirmed for Magnus that he was a marked man. Climbing out of the well, witnessing a whole town leveled, he had realized, with dread, that he felt the same horrifying sense of familiarity that he had that day at Raven’s Roost. Unable to explain the feeling, he had allowed himself, against his better judgment, to join the Bureau. The people at the Bureau were already putting themselves in harm’s way, he reasoned, trying to recover the relics. One man’s bad luck couldn’t add that much more danger. Besides, he needed some way to atone, somehow, for all the loss he had already failed to prevent. Maybe these people could show him how make the good he’d done outweigh the bad. 

Still, it felt odd to live somewhere where everyone was at once so close to and so distant from one another. Members of the Bureau had a common goal. They trained together, they ate together, were literally trapped on a fake moon with one another. And still, at the end of the day, they were just colleagues. They were there because they had a job to do. After months on the road alone, to be a part of a community again couldn’t not remind Magnus of Raven’s Roost. At the same time, everything had an uncanny valley feel for Magnus, as if the tug of a feeling of home only accentuated all the ways this was not what Magnus had once had. He couldn’t help feeling he should be closer to everyone here. At the end of the day, he knew he was just yearning for a family to replace the one he’d lost at Raven’s Roost. He knew, too, that the Bureau could never do that, and felt guilty for even wishing for it. So he did his best to push his discomfort aside and just let his time at the Bureau be what it was, to throw himself into training and nothing more.

Still, if he could keep himself occupied during the day, the nights were hard. Ever since Raven’s Roost, he’d had nightmares every night. Ones where he was there, but still found he could do nothing to stop it. Ones where he finally tracked down Governor Kalen but couldn’t seem to lift a finger against him. The worst dreams, though, were the ones where Julia was still alive, and they were both so happy, and then he woke up. After Phandalin, he found that his brain had even more fuel for making his nights unbearable. The first night on the moon base, he woke up from a dream and noticed that Taako was not in his bed. Magnus knew elves needed less sleep than humans, but he couldn’t help worrying about Taako just the same. He’d lain there, trying to calm down, get the images from his dreams to go away, and listening to Merle snore, which he had to admit was oddly comforting and finally lured him back to sleep.

Still, the next night, worried about Taako and knowing he wouldn’t dream anything good himself even if he did stay in bed, he followed the elf out the door of the dorm and onto the quad. Even though almost no words passed between them the whole night, Magnus found that when they finally made it back to the dorm at 4 am, he slept soundly and didn’t remember a single dream he’d had in the morning.

***

The nightly walks quickly became a routine. Unless they were out on a mission, they’d slip out of the dorm to walk around campus together. Once, about a month after that first walk, Taako had tripped over a crack in the pavement and let out a string of curses in elvish. Magnus surprised both of them when he responded jokingly _in Elvish, “Watch your language!_ ”

Taako replied, “ _I didn’t know you could speak Elvish, homie._ ” 

“ _Yeah, I think I learned it when I was a little kid. Can’t even really remember who taught it to me. Haven’t thought about it in ages._ ” Magnus replied.

Taako himself hadn’t spoken Elvish in a while. Most elves tended to be a little snobby, and he had some sort of weird accent that most of them found annoying. So it felt a little odd to be speaking elvish, but even stranger was that Magnus’ accent was weirdly similar to his own. With Magnus’, you could definitely tell it wasn’t his native language, but it still more similar to Taako’s way of speaking than anything he’d heard before. To his surprise, Taako felt tears well up in his eyes, but he quickly suppressed them. And he didn’t ask Magnus about the accent, either. After going his whole life without anyone who sounded like him, he wasn’t about to question it. But that night broke the silence that had existed between them up until then.

At first they’d just exchange the same joking banter they did during the day and on their adventures, just in Elvish this time. But both of them had also grown a little weary of just walking around. The moon base was big, but they had already explored almost every part of it that they were allowed to go. They quickly got bored. The Moon Base had a surprising amount of recreational facilities on it, but they were almost all closed at night. So one time, Taako said, “ _It’s ludicrous that the bowling alley is closed. What do they think we’re going to do, steal the bowling balls? Training is bad enough here, carrying those away would be like a whole workout. I’m not about to do that, homie._ ”

Magnus paused, then got a devious look on his face. “ _I bet we could find a way to get in there._ ”

Taako grinned back. “ _Oh yeah?_ ” They looked around the building for a bit before they found a pretty good sized air duct. “ _Bet you I can fit through there to let us in._ ” Taako said. Magnus looked incredulous, eyeing Taako up. The air duct wasn’t tiny, but Taako was almost as big as Magnus was. Still, Magnus wanted to see the elf try, so he rifled through his bag, finding a carpenter’s tool that he managed to use to get the screws out of the duct.

“ _After you_ ,” Magnus told Taako, gesturing elaborately to the duct.

“ _Fun fact about elves, we’re very cat-like_ ,” Taako said before managing to squeeze himself through the vent in what was indeed a very cat-like way. Magnus knew that his human self would not be able to follow. Before long, Taako had made it through the vent and unlocked the door. Magnus looked delighted. Secretly, Taako was pleased.

Another thing he’d never mention to Magnus: other elves were dexterous, sure, but when he’d happened to pulled similar stunts in front of them, everyone always seemed a little horrified. They’d ask him all kinds of questions. “ _Are you double jointed? I feel like you’d have to dislocate your shoulders to do that!_ ” Taako never explained himself. Just another thing to set him apart from everyone else. But Magnus took Taako’s skill at face value, even revealed in it. They spent the rest of the night bowling, Taako resorting to using Bigby’s Hand to guide his ball into a perfect strike when it became clear that Magnus would otherwise win, despite Magnus’ protests.

After that night, they would spend the nights two ways: trying to break into as many places as they could, and convincing each other to show off whatever other weird skills they had. They broke into the blacksmith’s shop and Taako egged Magnus into trying to bend larger and larger pieces of metal in half. They tried to find the heaviest thing Magnus could bench press. Things like that.

Over time, though, they started sharing with each other things that were less showy and loud. Taako would cast cantrips and level one spells that nobody else really found interesting but that would delight Magnus: he could summon and hold a small light in his hands that seemed to glow an unnamable color, or he’d transmute small pebbles or sticks into types of stone or wood that Magnus didn’t think he recognized from anywhere. Magnus asked Taako about it, but Taako would always just say, “ _Guess cha boy has just got an active imagination._ ” The spells would wear off quickly, and Taako would just shrug, as always. Magnus wouldn’t try to hide the delight on his face, though.

“ _That’s really good Taako!_ ” he’d say. Everything about Taako that other people seemed to find weird, he loved. Magnus wanted to repay him. He didn’t think he could make anything as impressive as glowing light out of thin air or transmuted stones, but he still wanted to give him something. One night, he told Taako “ _I have something to show you._ ” He led Taako into the carpentry workshop he’d spent his spare time in and pulled out a small wooden mongoose. “ _Because of your mask, in Goldcliff_.” He said.

When Taako leaned in to get a look at the mongoose, he had to stop himself from jumping back reflexively. It was just that Magnus smelled, like, well, pine and sawdust and varnish. Silently, Taako wondered if he was going crazy. _Magnus literally smells like the man of my dreams! As in, from my actual dreams._ It was the scent he sometimes woke up missing.

“ _Not bad_ ,” was all Taako had said, but the next day Magnus noticed it had a prominent place on Taako’s bedside table. He didn’t know why his heart soared quite so much seeing it there. He’d given gifts like that to people before. It hadn’t felt quite so… significant before.

But neither Magnus or Taako would let themselves read too much into that night, or any of the other for that matter. They didn’t want to examine what exactly it was that these nights meant to themselves or each other. The nights they spent together seemed to hang in precarious balance. It was the only time they really got alone. Otherwise they were always at training, or eating at the mess hall with everyone else, or risking their lives with Merle. It seemed like asking too many questions – _Why can you speak Elvish? Why do I feel static at the back of my brain when I’m with you? What do you mean to me? What do I mean to you?_ – would shatter the moments of peace they had carved out.

Taako would ask Magnus to show him how to make something out of wood, and Magnus would say, “ _No, you’re holding that tool wrong. Let me show you_ ” and put his hand over Taako’s, and then for a second neither of them would say anything. Magnus would make a particular show of strength in breaking them in somewhere, and afterwards Taako would say “ _Wow, really showing off today, huh_ ” and jokingly feel Magnus’ biceps, and for a moment, neither of them would say anything. Even in Elvish, there were still things they couldn’t talk about.

***

Then, Refuge happened.

They all said little about what the chalice had showed them, but it was enough. Taako had known for a while that Magnus had a dead wife. He hadn’t wanted to think too hard about what that might mean. But after being forced to relive possibly the worst day of his life, well. The chalice might have been evil or whatever, but it had given him a reminder that he needed. Magnus had already lost so much. Having Taako in his life could only end badly. Taako was the kind of person who went unloved, who people left. The last time he had really gotten close to someone, it had cost people their lives. He wasn’t what Magnus needed. And why did it matter – he was obviously not who Magnus wanted, either. There was no way. Taako had been misreading things. They had just been passing the time together. They were colleagues, and they had almost gathered all the relics, and it was going to end sooner or later.

For Magnus, too, the chalice was a stark reminder. Julia was _dead_. How could he have moved on with his life? How did he have the right to be as happy as he was when he was with Taako? And this relics business – things were getting more and more dangerous. Magnus wasn’t going to be able to protect his friends, one day soon. He was just an idiot with a sword. And then there was the picture of himself as a Red Robe. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it wasn’t good. His bad luck was catching up with him, and he didn’t want to drag Taako or, for that matter, Merle down with him.

When Magnus and Taako returned from refugee, it was with a mutual, unspoken resolve to spare the other from themselves.

***

It was surprisingly hard watching Taako fall for Kravitz. Magnus should have felt relieved when, the night after Refugee, Taako didn’t show up for one of their nightly walks. Instead, he felt something akin to dread in the pit of his stomach. And Magnus was so used to feeling happy for others, unreservedly, that it made his discomfort with Taako’s new romance was all the worse. Taako didn’t even really know that he knew. It wasn’t that Taako wanted to keep it a secret. It’s just that he never really brought it up.

But once, when Magnus was headed back to bed after a night out walking (he couldn’t seem to break the habit, even though Taako had stopped showing up to join him), he’d run into Kravitz, who must have been getting up early to go bounty hunting just as Magnus was headed to bed. Kravitz was headed toward the showers, and Magnus noticed that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and Magnus noticed himself noticing that and blushed. He wasn’t sure what he was blushing at, really. Kravitz seeing him up so late? The mere discomfort of running into someone when neither of you were expecting to see anyone, let alone the person you had last wagered souls in a card game with? Or was it something else? In any case, Magnus had pieced together who Taako was seeing, and was trying to feel okay about it. He spent his nights wandering around in silence, or working in the woodshop. Often he’d go visit the Voidfish. It would often put a tentacle up to the glass or hum some sort of tune. Magnus, despite his lack of skill, would always try to hum along. 

***

It was surprisingly easy falling for Kravitz. One minute, Kravitz was a giant crystal Gollum who almost killed Merle, the next thing Taako knew they were at the Chug and Squeeze and then on a variety of other odd dates – neither of their lifestyles really lent itself to a casual outing at a pub or anything like that. There was some interplanar travel, avoiding Bureau colleagues and the goddess of death – all the typical trappings of whirlwind romance.

It wasn’t a matter of choosing between Magnus and Kravitz. It really wasn’t. It’s just that it was easier for Taako to fall for someone who had originally wanted a bounty on his head than it was for him to fall for a close friend. So what if the lady of death’s emissary turned out to not be into him after all, left him after a month or two of fun? What else would he have expected? But even more importantly, some sort of skeletal death emissary wasn’t about to get hurt by Taako. Much more durable than a human man with a tragic backstory.

And Taako liked Kravitz. He really did. Kravitz quickly picked up on the fact that good food was important to Taako, and so he was always bringing Taako breakfast in bed or taking him out to expensive restaurants. Taako appreciated Kravitz’s flair for the dramatic as well. Kravitz was always wearing over the top outfits anytime they went everywhere, and while Taako himself was pretty laid-back fashion-wise, he loved to see Kravitz just absolutely decked out.

But maybe his favorite thing about Kravitz was how he was always challenging Taako to ludicrous bets, like, “I bet you the rest of this basket of breadsticks that the waiter brings our food over in seven minutes exactly.” Kravitz always lost. Sometimes a whole evening would go by that consisted entirely of Kravitz teaching Taako a bunch of old and ludicrously complicated card games that Taako could never really get the hang of. Taako was enjoying himself immensely. Still, he couldn’t help thinking, in the back of his mind, _I’ve got a bet for you. Bet you this all ends badly_.

***

Of course, it wasn’t long after Taako and Kravitz got together that Merle, Magnus, and Taako got sent to Wonderland. The fact that Taako and Magnus had been spending less time together leading up to it just made everything so much worse. Magnus had seen Taako lose consciousness a number of times, and that was always rough as it was, but each time Magnus had had some sort of strange certainty that the elf would bounce back. But in Wonderland, Taako had taken such a big hit so early into the game. Magnus had to watch Taako drag himself, bleeding and grimacing, into each new challenge without a word of protest, and it tore him up. It was the lack of complaint from Taako that was the worst. Taako could be over the top, but that was what Magnus loved about him. Magnus knew he had never seen Taako like this before, silent and grimly determined, but it felt somehow familiar in a way that left Magnus feeling cold.

 _I should have been the one to take that hit_ , he thought, brushing aside Carey’s warnings that he couldn’t keep doing that. His bad luck had caught up with him, and hit him where it hurt the most. With each new challenge, Magnus worried that he would once again be powerless to save someone he loved, that Taako would fall down and not get back up.

But Magnus wasn’t the only one who Wonderland was rough on. Watching Magnus age ten years – well, Taako had always known that humans aged, but he had always had this weird notion somewhere in the back of his mind that Magnus was going to be in his prime forever, always kind of young and dumb and looking for a fight. Taako supposed it was just denial that made him think of Magnus as invincible. But seeing a reminder of the frailty of humans in such a stark way was almost more than he could take. And when the elves took Magnus’ memory of Kalen from him – well, it felt like there were more and more reminders of why Magnus and Taako never could have worked. Magnus had already been through so much. He deserved someone better than Taako. Taako wanted to leave Wonderland right then, the Bureau, everything, and just hunt Kalen down. How could someone be so cruel, take everything from Magnus like that? He told himself maybe it was better that Magnus forgot it. Taako wasn’t the right person for Magnus, but maybe he was the right person to shoulder his burden. That was what he was good at. Holding onto deaths and tragedies and a haunted past.

Everything came to a head when the liches stole Magnus’ body. Floating away from his body, Magnus realized that he was getting what he wanted, and that he didn’t like it at all. Part of him did want to give in and float away. _I’ll get to see Julia_. But a larger part of him thought of Taako, still so bloodied, of everything he would be leaving behind. _It’s not really bad luck if a f*cking lich steals your body from you_ , Magnus thought. _That just seems like foul play_. Out of his body, he’d never felt more powerless. His one strength was, well, strength. Still, he gritted his teeth (metaphorically) and focused on getting back to the land of the living.

Seeing Magnus leave his body shocked Taako out the physical pain and self hatred that was consuming him. He didn’t have time anymore to wonder if he was only dragging his team down, to wonder if he could save his friend: he just did it. When their hands clasped, their eyes met, and what passed between them was clear: a determination not to let go, luck and fate and everything else be damned.

***

But Taako should have known that things couldn’t have felt stable for long. Magnus’ body was gone, and the Bureau was maybe evil, and the lich was maybe not, and there was a voice in his head that he didn’t recognize but he loved. There was, as always, no time to really evaluate what he was feeling. They were breaking into the Bureau, and then Magnus had found his body. Magnus was going to get his body back and he was maybe going to forget everything, including Taako. Taako couldn’t quite explain the panic that threatened to consume him. This should be good. Magnus would be back and fully _alive_. But some strange voice in the back of his head thought, _I can’t do this again_. He paused. _Again?_

But when Magnus told him, “These are the hands that have held my wife,” Taako knew he couldn’t stop him. What he didn’t know is Magnus wasn’t just thinking, _These are the hands that have held my wife_. He was also thinking, _These are the hands that have held you, Taako_ , even if he didn’t know how to explain to himself where the thought came from. Magnus didn’t know how to explain his certainty that even if he lost all his memories, he would find his way back to Taako. There wasn’t time anyway, and so, as always, he left everything unspoken.

A short time later, all their memories were flooding back to both of them.

***

The memories overwhelmed Taako, as Barry had warned him that they would. They hit him in waves and then all at once. He was still processing Lup – _Lup_ – both that he had forgotten her and that she was gone – when he looked up and saw Magnus staring at him with a shell-shocked expression. At first Taako thought it was just a reaction to all of it – the whole century, the fact that Lucretia had taken it from them, everything – and that Magnus had merely made eye contact with the first person he saw. But then Taako peeled back the layers of memories, past Lup, and found his memories of Magnus underneath them.

It all came rushing back. The two of them, both hotheads in their own way, unlikely yet determined candidates for the mission aboard the Starblaster. They’d first met in a mess hall not unlike the one at the Bureau. Taako had sidled up next to Magnus to get a look at the bulletin board, and specifically a poster advertising the Starblaster mission. Without missing a beat, Taako told Magnus, “I’m gonna get in that program, you know. Cha boy’s gonna be blasting off into outer space a few months from now.”

Magnus raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh really?” was all he said.

“Yeah, haven’t you heard of me? I’m the best transmutation wizard there is! I’m Taako!”

Magnus laughed. “Well, Taako, we’d better get to know each other well, because I’m going to be on that ship too.”

“Really? What are you bringing to the table?” Taako asked.

“I’m an incredible fighter, and also really strong.” Without a word of warning, 

Magnus proceeded to lift Taako off the ground to prove his point. “See?” he said. Taako sputtered in protest until Magnus put him down, but as the human walked off, Taako looked after him appreciatively.

Lup, who Taako did not realize had been watching the entire exchange, snuck up behind Taako, whispering in his ear, “Quite a beefcake, huh, Taako?”

“Please, Lulu. You know my taste is more refined than that,” he told her. But despite his protests, Taako somehow managed to run into Magnus at the Fantasy gym the very next day.

This time, this first time, Taako fell in love easily. Because that younger Taako, he had something that Lucretia would later steal from him – he’d been loved, unceasingly and unconditionally, his whole life. This Taako had had Lup by his side, and with her, the knowledge that he was deserving of love. This Taako had had all of the confidence of an incredible transmutation wizard with cooking skills to match, and one who had never thought to mix those two talents.

And this Magnus, he still loved easily, only without the shadow of Raven’s Roost and the weight of one hundred years on his shoulders. This Magnus was confident that his strength was enough, unworried about rushing in to whatever bright future he wanted. This Taako and this Magnus – their love was not a respite from nightmares, a silent space carved out in the early morning, something inexpressible. Taako and Magnus flirted at the gym, seeing who could do more reps when weight lifting (Magnus, but not by much) and spotting for each other as they bench pressed. They flirted as they planned pranks on the nerds over in the science side of the IPRE. They flirted over the bad food of the mess hall, Taako telling Magnus he could do ten times better and proving it to him at their first diner date a week later. They were dating by the time the Starblaster was scheduled to set sail, because the worst thing they could imagine happening was that they broke up a week or two into their two-month-long journey and they were young and dumb enough to think “Well hey, even that couldn’t be so bad.”

Magnus and Taako were reckless, and they fell recklessly in love. And those first few years, when the hunger hit and they realized what they were up against – that they weren’t going home, that they were in this for the long haul – they were surprised to find that not only were they strong enough to weather it, but they were strong enough to weather it together. Magnus and Taako had fallen quickly in love without much regard for the future, but found that they were able to grow together, and not apart. A hundred years is a long time, of course, and it’s not that they never took time for themselves, that there weren’t growing pains or rough patches. But for much of the one hundred years, their relationship had helped sustain them.

Standing there at the Bureau, Taako relived it all. The early years, when he and Magnus had revealed in their invincibility, pulling larger stunts than they ever would have dared to back at the IPRE. The times he had watched Magnus died, and had to live a year without him, or the times Lup had died and Magnus had just held him, saying nothing. And, yes, the feel of Magnus’ callused hands in his, Magnus’ particular scent of pine and sawdust and varnish after he began woodworking. Taako remembered teaching Magnus elvish, remembered the sound of his twin’s voice as she joined the lessons, her accent exactly the same as his. He remembered sleeping for eight hours a night – as elves from his home planet did – both he and Magnus scrunched into one of the twin beds the Starblaster had been equipped with, and both of them waking up peacefully in the morning. Taako remembered watching Magnus grow, become less hot-headed, more protective, willing to struggle to get good at things that didn’t just require brute strength – and still always remain delightfully himself.

With these memories, Taako realized that he was enough. Enough for someone to love ceaselessly, for one hundred years. He had fought beside Magnus’ side more times than he could count. He had saved Magnus’ life, and Magnus had saved his, and in the years that they couldn’t manage that they had kept going anyway. They had always known they would get another chance.

Magnus, too, had relived it all. He was overwhelmed, at first, with the realization that Raven’s Roost really wasn’t the first time someone had taken everyone he loved away from him in one fell swoop. But after that realization came another one: _But I’ve got them back this time. It’s not too late. I can still fight for them – fight with them. We haven’t lost yet._ All this time, since he’d lost his memories, he’d been afraid that he was a marked man, that bad luck would follow him where ever he went. But now he realized that love had been following him, too. For the first time in a long time, Magnus let himself hope that maybe he was marked for something besides loss. Maybe he was even marked for greatness, for victory.

Taako and Magnus passed a look between them, one that said: _I know. And there’s not time right now. First, we have to do what we’ve been doing all these years one last time. We have to stand and fight_.

So Taako and Magnus did what they had maybe always been fated to do, and saved the world. And then, in the aftermath of victory, in the middle of the night, they stole off to the balance quad together for maybe the last time.

For a second, they simply stood side by side, looking up at the stars, not knowing what to say. How could they sum up a century that had gone unknown and unspoken for months? Then, Magnus turned towards Taako and declared simply, “I still love you Taako. I always have.”

“I love you too,” Taako said, and then simply buried his face in Magnus’ broad chest, letting himself do what he had been aching to do for months, just letting himself be held by Magnus. Of course, that wasn’t all that was left to say. In the coming days, they would talk about Kravitz – Taako loved him too, and didn’t want to just throw away what they had. Luckily, he didn’t have to. Magnus and Kravitz had both been – well, not alive necessarily, but around for at least a hundred years, and they’d seen enough of the world to realize that your partner could love someone other than you and not love you any less. Magnus and Kravitz got to know each other better, too. Kravitz taught Magnus some new card games, although nowadays they bet things other than people’s souls. They swapped stories of pet ravens and dogs and past adventures over lavish dinners that Taako painstakingly prepared for them all, until they found that their bond was a lot more than just their mutual love of Taako. Magnus and Kravitz fell in a love that was all their own, and all three of their lives were the richer for it.

In those years after they saved the world, Taako and Magnus flourished. Even though they had spent much of their life together in the heat of battle, they both realized that those had never been the moments that truly encapsulated their love for one another. When they looked back, they didn’t linger on the moments when they saved each other’s lives, or fought alongside one another. Instead, they treasured the moments between what would become history, when the highest stakes were whether they would be able to pull of their latest prank on Davenport or whether Taako’s latest soufflé would turn out well. They reminisced about hiking up mountains together on particularly beautiful planes, about the times Magnus would interrupt Taako’s cooking so they could dance around the kitchen together or when Taako would just sit and keep Magnus company as he perfected his woodworking abilities.

And they made new memories like those ones, memories fit not for world famous adventurers but an old couple in love, memories by themselves and with Kravitz. Taako was finally even able to treasure watching Magnus grow old. He had lived lifetimes with him when they were both hot-headed warriors. This was a new adventure. When Magnus passed, Taako took comfort in knowing Magnus had Julia, and Magnus knew Taako and Kravitz still had each other. Besides, it wasn’t like Kravitz couldn’t pull a few strings now and then. They had long ago learned that it was never really goodbye with them. And so they saved the world, and then they lived gratefully through the mundanities of their lives which were unknown and unrecorded by anyone except the people who mattered most.


End file.
